Today during my VO2 workout I thought about this feature that would be great if we could have 2 types of percentages on resistance mode, like on many treadmills that you can set the ‘work’ resistance for high intensity and ‘rest’ resistance for when you are doing active recovery/rest in your HIIT workouts. For instance, in TrainerRoad workouts I would be able to set 25% resistance to the ‘rest’ interval and 50% to the ‘work’ resistance.
Requirements:
Arrows automatically increase/decrease ‘rest’ or ‘work’ resistance respectively depending on the interval you are currently in;
Resistance automatically gets set to the percentage you specified for each type of interval;
You can set any of the types using your cursor/mouse;
You can set a default in your settings configuration;
I’m not exactly sure why this is better than just shifting gears. (I do all my hard workouts in resistance mode.) The only use case I can think of is if my resistance level leads to e. g. the rest interval being between gears. But you can deal with that by increasing or decreasing resistance with the + and - buttons.
Well… I was used to Erg mode, but found out that those long threashold intervals are more tolerable using Resistance mode (and its also best for your knees, road feel, etc) so I guess I’m a bit spoiled with the automatic stuff and not having to use my gears. Also I believe if you don’t have to use them while training hard workouts indoor you will spare them much more. Also… to be honest, currently I don’t have my gears very well tuned hehehe… so I would also prefer to stay on one gear as much as possible =P
But yeah… not wearing out the gears would be the biggest advantage I guess and also having the peace of mind and confidence that the resistance will be set on point when the hard/easy interval starts would also be awesome IMHO.
…but then again, isn’t the changing of the gears the main way that gears get wear down?! the chain rubbing against the new gear ring until it enters completely?
Anyway,… one other possibility would be to just enter the new resistance value using the keyboard numbers. That way it would be faster as well and not having to wait until the arrow gradually gets to the desired percentage number.
I was imagining something similar; sort of a half way between pure resistance mode and erg. I’ve been mostly using erg, but thought I’d try resistance mode on some 30/30s to more thoroughly embed on my head what a power feels like. I found that I’d either end up doing the recoveries at 30rpm to get anywhere near target power, or having to be rapidly and constantly shifting from one extreme of my gears to the other.
I was thinking a resistance profile mimicking an oversized pump track could give me chance to still control power and cadence, but avoid thousands of gear changes (and probably snapping a chain when I screw up and change under load at near max HR!)
Not really. Unless you are shifting regularly under a heavy load and just hammering the shift, there is minimal wear on the cassette in particular. Most cassette cogs are hardened steel for a reason which includes resistance to wear.
People burn up chains at a 2x or 3x rate compared to cassettes and that has more to do with pure loaded use than shifting. The cassette will outlast those chains in all situations other than ones exposed to severe conditions like mud. There’s just no reason to “skip shifts” if you are concerned about the cassette
Shifting does place more load on the shifter itself along with the cables (mech at least) and the derailleurs vs not shifting at all as you are suggesting.
The only real exception I can justify here would be for those using MTB setups with 1x12s setups. Those feature more extreme chain angle and load in all conditions, along with cassettes that may feature some aluminum cogs. That adds up to more potential for wear overall, but still a relative non-issue IMO.
That aspect is not enough reason to justify the addition of this feature in and of itself, IMO. I think the concept you mention is valid, and having a basic “High / Low” quick switch for Resistance could make sense. But the implementation of it (how it’s set, stored & accessed) are all details that take time and thought to figure out.
But in the end, this sounds like a heavy lift for TR vs just using the shifting that is so often regarded as one reason many people choose to use Resistance mode vs ERG mode in the first place. This suggestion practically attempts to make a form of hybrid between the two. Great if they do it, but it’s not something that can be done with the snap of a finger.
I posted a similar request because its impossible to get the correct wattage for work and rest on my tacx.
Going to opposite ends of my gearing is also not the correct solution.
